Tell me about your heart dog

This is a place to gain some understanding of dog behavior and to assist people in training their dogs and dealing with common behavior problems, regardless of the method(s) used. This can cover the spectrum from non-aversive to traditional methods of dog training. There are many ways to train a dog. Please avoid aggressive responses, and counter ideas and opinions with which you don't agree with friendly and helpful advice. Please refrain from submitting posts that promote off-topic discussions. Keep in mind that you may be receiving advice from other dog owners and lovers... not professionals. If you have a major problem, always seek the advice of a trainer or behaviorist!

I want to hear about that dog that holds a special place in your heart, whether they're still with you or moved on. When did you realize there would never be another that truly compared? Was it an instant connection? Did it take a few months/years? Or did you only realize after they were gone? What is/was your bond like? Stories about amazing moments with that dog, ect. Just a fun thread to talk about the most perfect relationship you've experienced with a dog

As much as i love and adore Missy, i do believe Ty is my heart dog. The reason i feel that way is because the relationship is different. They're treated equally, but i somehow feel deeper connected to Tyler. I feel stronger emotional connection to him and i trust him implicitly. Sometimes while he's sleeping on his bed i'll just lay down beside him and rest my head on his chest and it's such a bonding moment, a real deep love i feel for him. He's so gentle, so laid back, so trusting of me. I feel protective of him too and feel he needs more looking after than Missy. I knew after a couple of days after bringing home at 10 weeks old that he was special. Nothing like you expect a puppy to be, he's always been wise before his years and i think that deep thinking, serious, level headed and wise demeanour about him is what cemented our relationship very early on too. I wasn't sitting there, wishing and praying for the day he grew up, matured and became the dog i wanted. He was all that already. We're very compatible i guess and have been from day one.

Jaxey was my heart dog. She came from a horrible place but managed to weasel her way into my heart. We could speak to each other with just eye contact. I know it sounds crazy, but I always knew what she wanted with just a look or a little whine. My husband accused me of "speaking dog" with her. She followed me everywhere and always laid down by my feet. She trusted me completely. Even the vet couldn't believe she was the same dog I first took to them when she was 4 months old. I know dogs don't hug, but she did. She would come over to me, lay her head on my lap and push her shoulder into me with her one paw next to me. She loved to have her ears scratched / massaged and loved a really good belly rub. She was my biggest challenge while she was growing up and at one point, I really didn't like her much. As an adult, she was like a fine lady with very gentle manners and gave me very little trouble. She was very protective, and didn't trust strangers until she got to know them. Then you couldn't get rid of her. She accepted and raised 2 awesome dogs (Kali & Koby) from 8 weeks old. I think there are very few dogs like Jax and I was very lucky to find her. She was one in a million. Her original owner / breeder can eat her heart out, because she had no idea what she had. Her loss was my gain. I wouldn't have traded Jax for all the money in the world. She was truly my friend.

Maggie is my heart dog...from the moment I met her I knew she was mine and then from the day she came home to me there was a connection (granted with her severe SA it was really hard to keep her at first). I have had other dogs in the house and I currently have three, but Porter was never really "my" dog and even Tika (who I adore and she is very compatible to me, they just aren't what I would call a special relationship). Maggie is my favorite and gets away with naughty behaviors that the others would never dare to do. I know that there will never be another Maggie and it breaks my heart to even think about it - she has gone through so much with me and has been my buddy ever since the day I met her.

I LOVE that pic of Tyler! Such a soulful expression, it's beautiful. Is he older, or does he just have the white on his face?

I think Miyu is my heart dog. I'm not certain sometimes, because I only had a family dog growing up and I feel a bit like... this is something you have to have a few more to know! But the more time I spend with her the more I think I won't ever find another girl like her. She is truly the perfect dog for me right now. So smart, so sweet. Mellow in all the right ways, drivey and charged in all the right ones. Well behaved, she tries so hard. She's protective, but not too much. Great with people and other dogs, she's not overly friendly but also not aloof. It is obvious, so obvious though, that I'm her PERSON. My husband always points this out. I feel bad (just a little) but I love it. She loves me, I know it, and even only having her for... 6-7 months, I'm not sure I can imagine not having her.

I used to want other dog breeds for the future, and sometimes I go, "Will they measure up to her?" And I decide that no, they likely won't.

Although I dearly loved the other three dogs I had in my life, Sita & Tia are truly my heart dogs!! From the second I met Sita we had an instant bond, despite her old family being there. She came right to me & never left my side. Ten minutes later she was in my car on her way to her new life. Now we are rarely apart.

The first time I met Tia, she was 5 weeks old. The breeders told me she was the trouble maker of the litter, the leader & the most dominate of the group. She was the first out of the whelping box & the one that led her other littermates in all their adventures. They said she never stayed still, unless she was asleep. I sat on the floor when they brought her in. She walked up to me, kissed me, crawled into my lap & fell asleep. My heart was lost forever!

Together, my girls are absolute perfection! Well, ok, they do have their quirks, but that just adds to their charm!!

Always will be Pogo. I don't think about replicating it. I have had awesome relationships with many dogs, and I am sure I could come up with another were it not for him. But it will always be Pogo.

I suppose part of it is that he was a second. Not the "dog I wanted" in any specific way. I had spent all my teen years waiting on my Dobermans, and when I had them, it wasn't quite what I envisioned. And then came Flo, my very high end dog, who was and trained very well for me, but socially was my husband's dog because that was what she said. So I wanted my own bond. I knew it wasn't going to be a Doberman. Had no clue what it should be. That would take years of migration. Everyone told me to get a GSD, due to my training background. They were so common, though. I saw no hook in them. Great dogs, I knew that. So I half heartedly put them on my list. I had three or four inquiries out on other breeds.

Just because I don't love or own a breed doesn't mean I am unaware of it or don't follow it. I knew GSD pedigrees very well. I am a von Stephanitz fan. And when through my grapevine I was contacted, and heard of this puppy with this pedigree that was off the charts. I mean OFF the charts. A dream pedigree. From a border patrol guard son of Held, imported right off the field from Belgium, and was cranking huge scores in Sch, which was newer back then. And man was he stunning...looked like a bear. And from a Kirschental bitch whose female family I was very impressed by, and by Lasso, who I thought was the greatest GSD on the planet at that time. How could I say no? Ok....what color is he? If they had said black-and-tan, maybe Pogo never would have come here. They said sable. They said he was their hold back for competition, but they were overstocked and needed to place him. Sable. Hmmmm. Well that and the pedigree? Ok. Ok, I guess so.

So he comes. Not well, either. Sort of catatonic at the airport, and then after bond exercises for a day stuck to me like a magnet. Flo, my Doberman, was furious, snooting in the corner. Good! I had taken two weeks off. Then I went back to work, and all hell broke loose, and hell it would be for quite some time. I was called home multiple times by neighbors who thought he was dying. He wasn't barking, he was screaming. Desperately trying to break out of his crate. My vet said he scratched his cornea. Yet was fine with the crate when I was at home...or pretending not to be. So no crate. After a week of destruction, we got a baby gate. After two days, we got another, to stack on top of it. After two days more, a third....one stacked atop another. VICTORY! Well, no. He learned to pop open the fridge. And then he decimated all my husband's vintage guitar effects. Every day, the sheer creativity of his destruction was mind numbing.

Once, he drank a bottle of oil, and in the middle of the night starting firing poop bombs. So lubraicated, the things were shooting out like torpedoes. We had to replace the carpet due to the heavily oil content coating them....greased messed, beyond salvage.

Ok, so these issues are workable, and in time he got better. Then he tried to bite my friends face off. And was totally ignoring me in training. Reinforcers? Eh. Corrections? Eh. Didn't play. Didn't like toys. Didn't like the ball. REALLY did not like food....wouldn't even finish his supper, and I could leave a steak on the counter, on the FLOOR, and he wouldn't have touched it. He liked sour cream. You couldn't get him to wag his tail. He wagged it when he wanted to. Loved me though. Followed me around, was always within three feet.

I love my mentor, who chewed me out a new arse. My dog thought I was utterly incompetent, and he was right, and I am a waste of that dog and whatever else. So we worked on this very complicated training approach....show him what to do That was it. Just show him, and he'll do it. And he did.

My husband loathed him. We had fights. He was destructive, he was stubborn, he was weird, he was aggressive, he was UGH! I told him to wait and have patience. That this would be the best dog he'd ever known. Because he was so beyond me. So more in the know. And through it all, I never doubted his devotion. I was finally catching up to him.

Today, my husband cannot mention his name without crying. The amount of awe he came to have for Pogo is immeasurable.

He was as hard as a block of cement. He had no drive save for fight, and there he was TREMENDOUS. He was always serious, save for that he loved to greet us and "melt" after we came home, leaping up and then collapsing in our arms as we scritched him. He had the heart of a lion. And the soul of a lamb. When a foster cat had kittens and proved an awful mother, he was distressed. He been raised (at his breeders) alongside a cat momma, and with "his" kittens was constantly picking up the kittens screaming for their momma and wandering, blind and flat bellied, in his mouth. The site of a kitten's head disappeared into his mouth....and he'd truck them back into their box and sentry that. Same dog who in his protection had such mind numbing authority. He never even barked. He just DID, as if he was a lion dispatching a scarecrow. When my Dachshund puppy came, although Pogo was no player, he relented and did so because he was a good Shepherd.

He never had a leash by the time he was two. He ignored everyone who was not my family. People would come over with their "project Pogo" to get him to come, and he would just stare. Totally reliable, but he had his circle, and that was his world. One of the kittens he helped raise, Soda, was attached to his hip....I have a picture on his page of those two. Any dog who aggressed, he would stare and they would cower away. He was a VAT....a maned lion, but his perception and gentleness, layered against his steelyness, would awe you beyond measure.

I had him for eight years. He was never healthy. He was not expected to live that long, but my husband and I both believe he held in until he was confident I could tolerate life without him. And then two days of what I did not know was him saying goodbye. Unusually emotive. I wondered what was up with the oddness of him then, but it was his parting glance and one last chance to awe me at his amazing majesty.

"We shall never see the likes of him again." They said that about Man O'War. And for me, that is Pogo. Never again, and that is ok. For me to have been graced in my one lifetime I know is more than most get.

There are dogs that I have loved especially dearly. Onion I loved especially dearly....from the pits of my heart, the amount of joy and adventure he put in my life and what a good friend to me he was has no measure. I am nothing but goo about Onion, what a spectacular dog! We were exceptionally close. And for Chester....I live in abject terror at the thought of losinghim. Not sure how I'll deal. But Pogo was awe striking, as some living legend you were fortunate enough to rub elbows with. I don't even think of him as friend, but something beyond me, spending a lifetime to attain a fifth of what he was. I was graced by his presence, and today and graced by his memory.

Charlie is and will always be my heart dog, that one dog that I feel I could never live without, that dog who has a connection with me that no other dog will ever compare to. The dog who stole my heart within moments of meeting him, the dog that kept me going when the going got tough. And he truly did come into my life at a very very difficult time, when I needed him most.

A doggy daycare regular owner walked in with her two regulars, a German Wirehaired Pointer and a Cocker Spaniel, and strolling along with them was this adorable Beagle who I'd never seen before. I asked her about the newcomer, and she said abruptly, "He's free to a good home. I've been holding onto him for my sister, but she can't keep him anymore so if anyone is interested, let me know."

I spent the entire day getting to know him and my heart and mind were set on this stubborn little dog who couldn't give a rats if I was there or not. So I begged my grandmother to let me bring him home, and she agreed. I took him home a few days later and knew he was the dog the instant he jumped into my families arms upon entering the home and began washing their faces in kisses.

But I was lied to. Not only was he not six months old - he was eight months, he WAS NOT trained at all and only knew his name(the main reason I kept it), and he wasn't housetrained either. Over the next several months, I took him to work with me and when we weren't working, we were out walking for hours at a time or at the dog park working on his training in and out of the house. I also found, by going through his previous vet records which I was given, that he'd had AT LEAST four homes prior to me and traveled all the way up from North Dakota, to Canada!

Now, he's a beautiful little dog with more and more white hairs spreading across his face per day as he ages, he's super happy and far less anxious than he was before. He's loyal, incredibly sweet and cuddly and when I'm feeling down and out, he'd love nothing more than to go curl up in bed and nap with me.

He's the dog I will raise my children with. The dog who will forever hold the most special place in my heart. And I don't think I will ever connect the same with any other dog. He just has this way of pulling at your heartstrings and making you want to cry when you think of a time when he won't be here anymore.

It sounds incredibly sappy, but that's Charlie. And he's the dog that's always happiest when he's making you happy.

Smokey is the first dog that's mine. I don't know if I believe in heart dogs or if he's mine, but I do feel like he's supposed to be with me and my life wouldn't be nearly as good without him. He watches me with such adorable concern when I'm upset. He taught himself to take a flying leap and balance on top of my exercise ball so he can be near me when I'm sitting on it. And he plays tug and fetch with such hilarious, adorable focus and enthusiasm. But I think my absolute favorite thing is watching him chase seagulls. He runs just so, so, so fast. His legs are about two inches long, but they move at the speed of light. People just stop and stare and crack up. And when he gets done chasing the seagull, he runs back and looks at me meaningfully like "THAT WAS AMAZING. THAT WAS SO MUCH FUN." Every now and then he catches up to one and he stops and runs at it a few times to remind it that it's supposed to fly away. If it doesn't, he play bows at it. He is just a constant source of hilarious little antics. I feel so lucky to have him.

Yorta could have been my heart dog if he were mine. Me and him had a very deep friendship. I often feel sad we didn't know each other long enough.

Me and Jackson are very bonded too and he is the first dog that has been mine. I don't know if he's my heart dog or not though. There could be another I'll feel a stronger connection with, I don't know. But I love him very dearly.

I can't get forum helper to work tonight so here is a link to a pic of me and Yortz.